South Africa goes to the polls: challenges and memory on the 30th anniversary of Mandela's election

On May 29, South Africa will hold the most unpredictable elections of the post-apartheid era. The African National Congress (ANC) party has won every election since 1994 and managed to retain a majority in parliament. However, unemployment and rising poverty, especially among young people, cast doubt on the party's continuity in power.

The polls take place in the year South Africa marks three decades of Freedom Day. April 27, 1994, was the date of the first democratic elections in the country, in which people of all races had the right to vote. Thirty years after Nelson Mandela's symbolic win, the black population is fighting to preserve the memory of this achievement and confront the neoliberal forces that keep the country as one of the world champions of inequality.

That's the theme of the documentary 30 Years of Mandela's Election - The Next Step, released in April by Brasil de Fato and available on YouTube. Through unpublished testimonies from political leaders, people's movements, historians, artists, and former political prisoners, the film focuses on how was buil the popular struggle that ended Apartheid, pointing out the ways that led to the elections in 1994. And what is the current situation where the country finds itself on the eve of this year's election?

"The working class is being exploited, and people are paid peanuts to work long hours, in addition to services not being provided to the poor and marginalized in this country. That's the situation happening worldwide. We are seeing capitalism come to us, and if we don't stand up to capitalism, we will continue to be exploited," said Thapelo Mohapi, secretary-general of South Africa's most significant movement of slum dwellers, Abahlali baseMjondolo.

"The material economic realities where your grandparents lived - if you're a poor black person -, that's probably where you're living today. And where your grandparents lived, as a rich white person, is probably where you still live today. That is, in many ways, why there is a view that 1994 was a first step and an important one. But the second step still needs to be taken. 74% of young people in South Africa are unemployed because we haven't changed the economic structure of Apartheid. This is a racial phenomenon," concludes researcher Jonis Ghedi Alasow.

Directed by Iolanda Depizzol and Pedro Stropasolas, the Brasil de Fato production also denounces the fact that Freedom Day and the end of racial segregation did not mean the achievement of equality between the country's Black majority and white minority.

Irvin Jim, the General Secretary of the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA), said that "We quickly learned that what we guaranteed through this was political power, but without economic power. It became very clear that what we had was a negotiated agreement, where the ruling class in society is the capitalist class that owns the mineral, energy and financial complex, constitutes South Africa's economy and was not prepared to basically rectify the ownership of Blacks and Africans who are economically marginalized, landless and dispossessed."

Check out the documentary: